Sweet Dream Baby

by Sterling Watson

  When it’s over, a man comes on talking about buying a Ford at some place in Tallahassee, and Aunt Delia’s eyes wake up. She says, “We’ll hear the Killer soon enough. He’s got two songs in the top ten right now.”

  “That’s okay,” I say. “Dion’s pretty cool.”

  Aunt Delia looks over at me and smiles. We drive on through the town, past the mercantile, the sheriff’s office, an ESSO gas station, a post office with a sign that says, Notary, and a doctor’s office, and suddenly we’re out in the country. We pass houses that look like the ones in town, only there are pens with pigs in them, and big vegetable gardens, and fields of corn and men on tractors in the fields plowing and throwing up curls of red dust behind them. We come to a crossroads and stop. “Well, Killer,” my Aunt Delia says, “this is where the citizens of Widow Rock make the big decision. You can turn right, and about a mile down there’s a juke joint called Luby’s. That’s where the bad boys go and some of the bad girls, too, but nobody I know.”

  She winks at me and smiles, and it’s the look she gave Grandpa Hollister when she drove too fast into the garage yesterday, and I thought he was going to be mad. It’s a look ladies give men in the movies. It’s a look that says they know what the men are thinking, and they don’t mind it at all. I don’t know. I don’t understand it, but I like it when my Aunt Delia looks at me like that.

  “Not you,” I say. “You’d never go down there.”

  “No, not me,” she says, and smiles again.

  I say, “What’s juke?”

  My Aunt Delia shuts her eyes and thinks about it. Then she opens them and wiggles her shoulders, and it’s like she’s dancing right in the car, and she says, “You know, it’s what you do in juke joints. You juke.” And she wiggles some more, and it makes my throat get thick.

  I look up the road. “What’s in the other direction?”

  She says, “The river’s down there, Honey. And Widow Rock’s down there, the promontory for which our little hamlet is named. I’ll tell you the story of Widow Rock, but not right now. I don’t want you to be overcome by excitement on your first day.”

  I think about telling her all I’ve got to look at most of the time where I live is the miserable Pultneys and a wheat field and a dead farmer’s silo. I think about telling her sometimes I stand at the edge of our yard with my back to our house and the miserable Pultneys and just stare at that silo because it’s the only thing out there that’s not wheat. The only thing that’s not flat.

  I think about telling her I love the warm air blowing through the windows when we drive together, and the smells of things alive and scary and waiting for me out there. I think about telling her I love the Chevy’s red upholstery, and the scratchy, far away music coming from the radio, and the shiny chrome on the front of the radio, and the way her black hair whips around her face in the wind. I think about asking her a lot of questions. Why does Grandma Hollister have headaches, and when is Grandpa Hollister going to smile, and will he ever let me shoot his gun, and what does he do when he goes to work, and are we going to talk about last night? I just say, “I like it here. It’s exciting.”

  My Aunt Delia laughs, and her laugh sounds like I know the water will sound running over those flat stones I saw from the bridge. She says, “You’re sweet, Travis. It’s sweet of you to say that. But the truth is, Widow Rock is so boring sometimes I think I’m gonna jump out of my skin. I’m gonna get on that highway and just drive ’til I can’t drive anymore, and I’m gonna start a new life some place where the music comes from right around the corner and the people don’t think it’s a matter of honor to shit in their own backyard.”

  I’m quiet.

  My Aunt Delia reaches over and touches my arm. “Oh, Travis, I’m sorry. I’ve shocked you with my language. Well, don’t worry. Nobody heard me but you, and I promise I’ll do better. I’ll try not to offend your virgin ears. You’re my brother’s little boy after all.”

  I don’t like it. I turn to her and say, “I’m not a little boy. Today’s my birthday, and I’m twelve, and that’s not little.”

  My Aunt Delia looks at me, and her eyes go dark and wide, and she says, “Oh, Travis. Is today really your birthday?”

  I nod. Hard. “And I’m not little.” I want to say, “I’m cool,” but I don’t.

  For a second, I think my Aunt Delia is going to cry again. But she doesn’t. She reaches out and puts her fingers on my cheek. I’m mad, and I should pull away, but I don’t. I like how it feels with her fingers there. She says, “That damned Lloyd. It’s your birthday and he forgot to let us know.”

  She takes her hand away from my cheek, and it burns where she touched me, and she looks out across the steering wheel. We’re sitting at the crossroads, and the engine is running, and there’s no wind blowing through the windows now. In a field across the road, a horse stretches up to pull down a branch from a tired-looking oak tree. It’s too far, but the horse keeps reaching. A buzzard circles over the field, riding higher and higher on the wind.

  “He’s not damned Lloyd,” I whisper.

  My Aunt Delia says, “I know, Travis. I’m sorry. He’s your daddy, and he’s got an awful lot on his mind right now.”

  Then I feel her hand on my cheek again. “Let’s go back to the thriving metropolis of Widow Rock,” she says. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  It’s her old voice again, low and full of breath and like cool water over rocks.

  Eight

  I’ve wanted to go in that drugstore ever since I saw the blue words with white ice dripping from them: COOL AIR. I’ve only been in air-conditioning a couple of times. Once in a drugstore in Omaha, and once in a doctor’s office when I was little. It’s great. When you walk in, the hair stands up on your arms, and you shiver, and the air smells good, and when you breathe through your mouth, it tastes like peppermint.

  Delia parks the white Chevy in front of the drugstore, and there are two other cars, a red Oldsmobile and a white Ford pickup truck. We get out, and she looks at the two cars and winks at me. “Oh-oh, Killer. Look who’s here.”

  I say, “Who?” and she says, “You’ll see.”

  We go in, and it’s so cool my teeth hurt, and I like walking in with my Aunt Delia. I like the wavy way she walks and the way everybody looks at us when we come in.

  Just inside the door, we stop to look around. There’s a counter on one side full of Band-Aid boxes and cans of Barbasol and ladies’ perfume and razors and blades. On the other side, there’s a soda fountain with red stools and booths with red seats. Where we’re standing, there’s a cash register and a gun rack with some rifles and shotguns and boxes of shells.

  A man in a white apron and a white garrison cap smiles at my Aunt Delia and puts both hands on the marble counter and leans toward us. He says, “Hey there, Miss Delia, what can I do for you today?”

  There are two boys in one of the booths, and one of them giggles and makes his voice high, and sings, “Hey there, Miss Delia.”

  I can feel my Aunt Delia go hard beside me, and she lifts her chin a little, and she’s not walking so loose and wavy as we go to the counter.

  She slides onto a stool, and pats the one next to her, and I take it. The boy giggles again, and the man across the counter says, “Behave yourself, Sifford, or you’ll not be scarfing milkshakes in here for a month.”

  He looks at Delia and smiles, and she smiles, but her smile is small and thin. She says, “Mr. Tolbert, I want to introduce my nephew, Travis, from Omaha. He’s here to spend the summer with us.”

  Mr. Tolbert has a big, tanned, square face with pale blue eyes and a blue jaw like my dad’s. He’s got forearms like the business end of a baseball bat, and they’ve got thick black hair on them. A long scar starts over his left eye and goes up into his hair, and I wonder if it’s from the war. He smiles at me, and we shake hands and he says, “You’re Lloyd’s boy, aren’t you?”
>
  I nod and smile and remember to say, “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Tolbert looks past me at the front windows where the light comes in through the green glass, and I know he’s looking at the far away like my dad does. He says, “Your daddy’s one heck of a man, son. I’m proud to have you in my establishment.” I don’t know what he means. Maybe it’s the war, the things my dad won’t talk about. Maybe it’s the things my Grandma Hollister told me about in the car on the way from the airport. Scholarships and running the hundred so fast.

  There’s another giggle from the booth behind us, and the boy makes his voice as high as a girl’s. “Poor Travis, stuck in Widow Rock for a whole summer. That boy’s gone lose his mind.”

  My Aunt Delia turns around, and I turn, too, and it’s fun to spin on the stool, and I look at my Aunt Delia, and she’s got that small, tight smile on her face. She says, “Travis, I want you to meet two scoundrel dog boys. That one with the ugly red hair and the big ears is Ronny Bishop. The conceited one with the funny voice is Bickley P. Sifford. Bick for short. He’s conceited because he thinks he’s cute, and because his daddy owns the box factory and he’s accepted to Princeton. But you know what I think, Travis?”

  My Aunt Delia stops and looks at me. The two boys watch us, grinning. They look just like my Aunt Delia said. Red hair, big ears. Conceited and cute. But there’s more to both of them. The one called Ronny is as big as a man, and his neck fills his button-down shirt collar too tight, and his eyes are small and pale blue and seem to aim at you through the field of freckles on his cheeks. The one called Bick is tall and muscular, too, but he’s blond, and at first he reminds me of Tab Hunter. But he’s not that cute. There’s just something unreal about him, especially sitting across from the other boy. He looks like he knows he could say something that would change everything here. He looks important.

  The boys are waiting for me to ask, “What?” I can’t see him, but I know Mr. Tolbert is waiting behind the counter, too. So I say, “What?”

  My Aunt Delia says, “I think he’s going to get up there at Princeton with all the other boys, and their daddies are gonna own even bigger box factories, and they’re gonna be even cuter and even more conceited, and our Mr. Bickley P. Sifford is going to have him a comeuppance.”

  Mr. Tolbert laughs behind me.

  The red-haired boy looks at the one called Bickley P. Sifford and waits.

  Sifford is wearing a white shirt with a button-down collar, an alligator belt, penny loafers with shiny pennies and fuzzy white socks, and a pair of tight, faded jeans. I wonder if he’s cool. I think he is. I wait. His face is getting red, and I know he’s trying to think of something to say back to my Aunt Delia. Finally, he smiles, a kind of slow, evil-sneak smile, and I know he’s got something in mind. He says, “Delia, I bet you can’t spell comeuppance. I’ll bet you a ride in my car you can’t spell it. Mr. Tolbert’s got a dictionary, and after you try, we can look it up and prove I’m right. What you say, Delia? Will you go for a ride with me if I win the bet? Ronny here’ll take your nephew home, won’t you Ronny?”

  Ronny doesn’t like it much, but he smiles his own low, sneak-mean smile and says, “Sure. Sure I will, Bick.”

  I look at my Aunt Delia, and she’s thinking about it. I don’t want her to go for a ride with Bickley P. Sifford. I don’t want to ride home with his red-haired, jug-eared friend, Ronny. I like my Aunt Delia, and I want to stay with her, and it’s my birthday, and that’s our secret.

  My Aunt Delia puts her thumb under her chin and presses it there and makes a face like a little girl and thinks about it. Finally, she says, “You want to complete your list, don’t you, Mr. Bickley P. Sifford?”

  Sifford looks at her. He knows what she’s saying, and he doesn’t like it.

  “Your list of local girls and rides in your fancy red Oldsmobile. And then you can tell all the conceited sons of box-factory owners at Princeton that you took all the girls of Widow Rock and neighboring boroughs for a ride. That’s it, isn’t it, Mr. Bickley P. Sifford?”

  Sifford’s face is as red as his car. Mr. Tolbert is washing glasses behind us. I’m looking at Delia, and it’s strange. It’s strange because she’s saying one thing, but her eyes are saying another. They say she wants to go for a ride with Sifford. And Sifford’s eyes say he knows it, and that’s why his face is red. I think everybody here knows it, and they all knew it before I did.

  Sifford clears his throat, and his voice goes raspy when he says, “I’m starting a new list, and it’s gone have just one name on it. Yours. Why don’t we ride on out to Widow Rock. It’ll be cool out there by the river.” He looks at my Aunt Delia long and deep, and his eyes say things that make me look away at the gun rack over the counter. And I want to take down one of those guns and shoot him. I don’t look back until I feel my Aunt Delia’s hand on my shoulder. She says, “You and your bosom friend Ronny there can put your fancy red Oldsmobile in the back of his truck and ride off together. Me and Travis are on a shopping trip. Today’s his birthday, and I’m going to buy him a tennis racket.” She looks down at me and smiles. Then she reaches down and runs her hand through my hair.

  “How ’bout that, Travis?”

  I’m a shortstop, not a tennis player, but I smile big and say, “That’s neato, Aunt Delia.”

  Mr. Tolbert says, “I think we got a few things you can look at, Miss Delia.”

  Delia spins her stool around to face Mr. Tolbert, and I do too. She says, “First, we’re going to get Travis a big fat birthday chocolate malted milk, and then we’re going to buy him the best tennis racket in the place.”

  Again I smile and say, “Thank you, Aunt Delia.”

  Mr. Tolbert says, “Will that be two malts, Miss Delia?”

  My Aunt Delia says yes, and we sit together watching Mr. Tolbert’s big hands scoop the ice cream and pour in the chocolate syrup and the little malt balls, and then put the shiny steel container on the little rack with the propeller above it. He pushes a button, and the propeller spins until the chocolate malted swells up to the top. He puts the two malts in front of us, and I hear the two boys slide out of the booth behind us.

  Sifford says, “Last chance for that ride, Delia.”

  My Aunt Delia’s voice is mocky and sing-song. “Last chance to learn something about yourself before they teach it to you at Princeton, Bick Sifford.”

  Sifford laughs, and his friend follows with his own hee-haw. The two stretch and groan and shuffle, but we don’t look at them. Before they get to the door, there’s a loud rumble and an engine races, then cuts off, and I see Mr. Tolbert’s eyes go hard.

  I turn and look through the green glass at the front of the drugstore. At the curb, there’s a boy in a black leather jacket and loose jeans and black engineer boots getting out of a midnight-blue street rod. Sifford and Bishop stop at the front door and watch him. Sifford looks back at us and says, “Hey, Delia, maybe you want to go for a ride with old Duck’s Ass out there. How ’bout that?”

  Mr. Tolbert says, hard, “Sifford, you know I don’t tolerate language in my store.”

  Sifford says, “Sorry, Mr. Tolbert,” but he doesn’t mean it. Then he says, “See you around, Delia. We got all summer for that ride,” and it sounds like Jimmy Pultney telling me he’s going to climb over that fence and stomp my ass if I don’t give back his arrow. Delia says to her malted milk, “See you, Ronny.”

  The two boys go out and stand on the sidewalk watching the boy in the leather jacket. The midnight-blue rod has cool red flames painted on its sides. The flames swell up from the engine like it’s on fire. It has moon disks and Lakes Pipes too. When I grow up, I’m going to have a car like that.

  The boy in the black leather jacket stops in front of Sifford and Bishop, and they say something to him, and he says something back, and Mr. Tolbert takes off his apron fast and goes around the counter. He’s got his hand on the front door when Sifford and Bishop
look in at him and smile and get into the red Olds and the Ford pickup and drive off. Mr. Tolbert sighs and comes back to the counter. He leans on it and says, “Miss Delia, I don’t know what gets into those boys, do you?”

  My Aunt Delia says, “Often as not, conceit gets into them, and moonshine whiskey.” She looks at Mr. Tolbert, and he sighs again and shakes his head and starts washing glasses.

  Outside, the boy with the black leather jacket is working on his engine. He’s got the hood open and he’s leaning in, and the engine’s running, and he’s making it rev and come back down with a loud pop-pop-pop. He leans back and stretches, and the sides of his jacket fly out like black wings, and he looks up at the sun, and I can see the sweat on his pale cheeks and forehead.

  My Aunt Delia says, “Turn around Travis and stop staring.”

  Nine

  I like the way the tennis racket feels in my hand. It’s got a tan leather grip and shiny varnish, and the strings are tight and white, and it says, T.A.D. across the bottom. My Aunt Delia says that stands for Thomas A. Davis, but the kids just call it a Tad racket. She says she’s going to teach me to play tennis, and we’re going to play a lot, and by the end of the summer I’ll be as good as Pancho Gonzales.

  Delia takes a twenty and a ten out of her pocket and puts them down by the cash register, and Mr. Tolbert says, “How ’bout some balls, Miss Delia?” And my Aunt Delia says, “Why not? Travis is starting a new year of his life today. We might as well start out with fresh ones.” Mr. Tolbert reaches under the counter and brings up a red can that says Spalding. It has a key on top like a can of tuna.

  My Aunt Delia waits for her change, but she’s watching the boy outside working on his car. He’s got long black hair, and there’s a lot of oil on it, and it’s combed back like Elvis. He closes the hood and looks at the window, and I wonder if he can see us standing here. My Aunt Delia counts her change and says, “I got enough for one more malt, Travis. What do you say?”